A memory system may include sets of electrically conductive traces (e.g., word lines and bit lines) with a memory cell positioned at an intersection of a word line with a bit line. In some memory systems, a semiconductor device, such as a transistor, is positioned with and electrically coupled with the memory cell. The transistor includes a gate node (e.g., a MOSFET) or a base node (e.g., a bipolar transistor) coupled with a select line that controls access to the memory cell during data operations (e.g., read or write operations) to the memory cell. Furthermore, the transistor can be configured to require a range of threshold voltage potentials to be applied to the select line in order to read or write data to the memory cell. Accordingly, one range of threshold voltages can be used to read data from the memory cell and another range of threshold voltages can be used to write data to the memory cell. Typically, a MOSFET-based device is used for the transistor. The FET includes a source node coupled with the word or bit line, a drain node coupled with the memory cell, and a gate node coupled with the select line and operative to turn the transistor on when the select line is enabled and to turn the transistor off when the select line is disabled.
Consequently, three-terminals (i.e., the word, bit, and select lines) are required to access the memory cell for read or write operations. Accordingly, addressing the memory cell for a read or write operation requires selecting the appropriate word and bit lines for the memory cell and activating the select line of the transistor for the memory cell. However, the layout for three-terminal memory cells is not ideal and usually requires 8F2 for each memory cell in an array of memory cells, where F is the minimum feature size. As a result, an areal density for the memory system is decreased by the area required for each transistor and the routing resources required to implement the three-terminal connections to each memory cell in the array.
There are continuing efforts to improve memory systems.
Although the previous Drawings depict various examples of the invention, the invention is not limited to those specific examples. Furthermore, the depictions are not necessarily to scale.